5 Girls (named Alice, Betty, Carol, Diane, Emily) visit a mall to shop. They come upon a clothing shop and they decide to buy clothing.

But, for some strange reason, different colored shirts cost different amounts, which now came in increments of 10 dollars. (Every shirt of the same color costs the same amount.) This store doesn't carry very many shirts; the most expensive one is 50 dollars, and they only come in red, green, blue, yellow, and orange.

Each girl goes into the store and finds two different shirts. No two girls got the same pair of shirts, and no girl got a shirt for free. It ended up that each color shirt was bought exactly twice.

Using the following clues, can you figure out the two colors of shirts each girl bought, and how much each color bought, as well as how much each girl spent?

1) When the 5 girls were comparing their purchases, they found that Diane spent the most money, 2 girls tied for second most money spent, and the other 2 girls spent the same amount of money as well.

2) When Carol bought the blue shirt, she was mad that the it was more expensive than the 10-dollar price it was last week, and didn't buy the green shirt because of this.

3) Diane's and Emily's different styles resulted in them not buying any shirts the same color as each other's.

4) Alice and Emily both decided not to buy the orange shirt, but instead, Alice went with Carol to pick out the same color shirt to buy, noting that it didn't cost 20 dollars like last week.

5) As Betty was waiting to buy a red shirt (which she did end up buying), she saw Carol buy a shirt that cost 40 dollars.

Lesa posted a solution that works; however, for this to work, the red shirt that Betty buys has to be her 2nd shirt. I think this is an assumption that very few people would make. Most people would assume that it is Betty's first shirt because she is buying it at the same time as Carol is buying the $40 shirt--the Blue one--which is Carol's first shirt. That is the major problem with this puzzle--the time line is presented in a very screwed up manner. If Betty buys the red shirt as her first one, nothing works out correctly as far as money goes, and believe me, I tried every possible combination!

Posted by franny on 2004-01-22 15:30:36